A great big thanks from a newbie

[Folkcafe]

First of all a really big thanks to all that have contributed here. I've spent a good portion of the last month reading and searching through posts till my eyes were bloodshot. This place really got me up to speed on pickup building in short order.

As an avid woodworker, I always wanted to start building guitars. Recently I saw a youtube video of Seasick Steve playing his 3 string "trance wonder". That video and the whole Cigar Box guitar movement got me thinking about it again. So I decided that is where I would start. 3 & 4 String CB guitars except without the cigar box. Solid bodies, necks with truss rods and of course real pickups.

Anyway, here is a picture of bobbin #1. After I put this together, I realized I probably should have put the ferrules the other way. I'll drill and pop them out and switch them the other way before winding.

Again thanks to all who have asked and those that have answered the many questions I had. More importantly, thanks for the questions I didn't think of.

Don

[David Schwab]

Nice work!

[ShannonH]

cool

that sounds like a really fun project! The bobbin looks fine. I think if you are careful you don't have to remove the eyelets. There seems to be some variance on which direction to put them, as I've seen them installed both ways.

Peace

[RedHouse]

Looks good Don.

[Dave Kerr]

Nice stuff. If you're worried about snags on those eyelets, just put a piece of masking tape over then folded down over the edge of the bobbin, the wire will slide right over.

[pete n]

It looks really good. You might want to countersink the eyelets on the next one. That way you don't have to worry about breaking wire on it.

[Folkcafe]

Thanks everyone for the input

Instead of winding the bobbin in the picture, I ended up just making another. I decided to keep prototype #1 unwound. I oiled and sealed the body and neck yesterday and have it mostly assembled. It's playable and for the most part I'm very pleased with the sound. I've yet to pot the pickup but will once I decide it this one is staying in or not.

I ended up using a different method to building this one than the last. I had drilled out both pieces separately on the first one. Once I put it together, I noticed the holes were just slightly off. Not that anyone would notice once the thing was wound. So what I did instead was clamp both pieces together using some small machinist clamps and clamped a piece of 1" dowel standing up in the drill press vice. This allowed me to drill both pieces at the same time but more importantly, all three hole line up.

Here are a couple of pictures. My reference to playing this is the tenor banjo but it is not exactly translating at the moment. I have a 4 string on the drawing board and I think that will be a more natural feel for me.